Event Operations: How to conceive event ideas?

I once had a colleague who switched from another industry to do operations. He was often troubled by the fact that he had no good ideas for events, so he asked me for advice. I initially told him to look at the events of competitors in the industry and then modify them. After a while, he had an idea and came to discuss it with me. After listening to his idea, I didn't know how to evaluate it.

Perhaps because the basic knowledge of event operation is not solid, the ideas are too subjective and a bit difficult to implement. Later, I had to recommend him to read some basic knowledge books related to operations.

I think it is necessary to sort out the first step in getting started with event operations: how to produce creative and practical events. I am still using the following method. First understand the process of generating activity gameplay and build your own activity case library, you will no longer worry about not having good activity gameplay in your operations.

1. Understand the activity output process

I believe that many people who do event operations are accustomed to using this process. Whenever you are faced with an activity demand and you have no idea, you should first collect the activities of competitors and analyze them, then apply them to your own actual situation and make slight innovations and changes. Adapt it based on your own experience and your own substantive needs.

So how can you have the ability to adapt flexibly? First of all, you must have a clear understanding of all types of activities and be familiar with the characteristics of various types of activities and the scenarios they are suitable for.

2. Familiarity with several common activity types

Only by being familiar with common types of activities can you understand how to copy other people's ideas and innovate. To do operations, you need to understand the underlying thinking logic of an activity from the essence so that you can draw inferences from one example to another.

The following are the characteristics and applicable scenarios of several common types of activities:

1. Lucky Draw

Sweepstakes are the most common online activities on the Internet. Their characteristics are that the threshold for user participation is low, there is a certain probability of winning, and they take advantage of people's expectations for unknown things, and most people are very willing to participate. As long as this type of activity offers prizes that are attractive to users and makes users believe that they can win prizes, the number of participants will generally not be low. For example: add a marquee of winning records, view winning users and other functions.

After several years of development, there have been many innovations in the gameplay, and it is an activity template frequently used in the Internet finance and e-commerce industries.

Common ways to play are as follows:

2. Guess

Guessing activities often appear in some competitions and competitive products. Taking advantage of people's desire to predict the future, gamble, etc. For example: During the World Cup, many guessing games are very popular among fans. Coupled with attractive prizes, they can encourage users to actively participate.

3. Sign in

Sign-in activities are generally used to promote activation and are a common means of activity for products with millions of users, such as games, e-commerce, and mutual finance products.

There are generally three types of sign-in activities, combined with some platform points, rights, small gifts, etc., to encourage users to continue to sign in and be active.

4. Red Envelope

The red envelope activity started as a trend on WeChat and has been widely popular among users. In line with Chinese culture, people have always given red envelopes a festive and auspicious image, so they are widely loved by the public. The planning of red envelope activities is also a relatively complex activity that tests operational capabilities. So far, many innovative ways of playing have been created, such as: red envelopes for new members, password red envelopes, voice red envelopes, and the recently popular way of inviting friends to help open red envelopes on Pinduoduo.

5. Voting

A voting campaign is an activity that allows users to voluntarily bring traffic to you, because users participating in the election will generally invite friends to help vote in order to gain honor or win rewards. Voting is the fastest way for a public account to attract fans, but the quality of fans is generally not high. Common types include: beauty pageants, outstanding industry appraisals, etc.

6. Testing

Small testing activities often flood the WeChat Moments and are easy to spread, taking advantage of users’ curiosity, desire to compare and be superior. NetEase also often uses testing activities to flood the WeChat Moments. It is also an H5 activity that can give full play to a lot of creativity.

Common types are as follows:

7. Questionnaire

Questionnaire surveys are generally only held frequently on platforms with a large number of users, because the number of participants in the questionnaire survey needs to reach a certain number for the survey to be meaningful, and the question setting should be centered around the goal of your survey. At the same time, the user's participation time should be considered. There should not be too many questions, and it is best to control it within 8 minutes for users to fill in. You can also set certain rewards to encourage user participation.

8. Group buy and bargain

Group buying and bargaining is a common promotional method used by e-commerce platforms. After several years of evolution, many new ways of playing have been derived, such as: discounts on purchases over a certain amount, limited-time specials, bargaining with friends, etc.

9. Be courteous to the newlyweds

The purpose of the "gifts for new users" activity is to attract new users. Some platform rewards are directly given to newly registered users to encourage new users to register and cultivate users' habit of logging into the platform frequently and becoming familiar with the general functions of the product.

The above is just a personal list of common activity types. Of course, there are definitely other classic activity types. The rest is left to you to summarize and analyze.

3. Modified activity gameplay

After you become familiar with common activity types and characteristics and have mastered this basic knowledge, you can then adapt the activities, draw inferences from one example, and create your own activity plans.

The following briefly describes four methods of adapting activities. The specific method to be adopted can be flexibly applied according to the actual needs of the activity.

1. Replace an element in the activity

For example: In 2019, Pinduoduo launched an activity during the Double 11 period, whereby players could invite friends to bargain and have the opportunity to withdraw 100 cash. With its short participation path combined with the real-time feedback and stimulation on the page, this activity encouraged many female friends to spread the message among their acquaintances in Moments and WeChat groups in order to win Pinduoduo's 100 yuan cash. I believe that the effect of this activity has attracted a wave of new users to Pinduoduo and activated a group of old users.

Soon, Taobao, JD.com, and Douyin imitated the activity model less than half a month after Double 12, but changed the cash withdrawal of their activities to 100 or modified some activity rules and page interactions. Soon, this fission activity model of old users bringing in new users became popular throughout the entire Internet.

2. Two gameplay superpositions

Let’s take a simple example: the combination of questionnaire surveys and lottery activities can effectively increase users’ enthusiasm for participating in the questionnaire, but it is necessary to grasp the attractiveness of the lottery prizes and the jump conversion after filling out the questionnaire.

3. Combine activity gameplay with current hot topics

An example of combining lottery activities with hot topics: During the 2020 epidemic, the supply of masks was tight. Many platforms used lotteries and draws to bring exposure to the platform and carried out a wave of public welfare product promotion.

4. Connect your gameplay to important people and events

Recently, in order to make money to pay off his debts, the internet celebrity Luo Yonghao, a greasy uncle in his 40s, announced that he would enter the live streaming circle, which caused a lot of controversy. In just three hours in one night, he created a transaction volume of 160 million. You can take advantage of this hot topic to organize a test activity with the theme of "Test who is more suitable to be the number one live streamer between you and Luo Yonghao". If Tik Tok gives you the same traffic and exposure, will you do better than him? Come test it and you will know.

4. Collect activity cases

As the saying goes: "If you have watched countless films, you will have no code in your mind." Once you have mastered the production process of the activity, the rest is just practice. Build a personal activity case library. Only when you have studied and analyzed enough activity cases, you will be able to have a clear idea of ​​them and use them at will.

I’m sharing with you a template for collecting and organizing activities. You should also pay attention to the following types of activities.

• First, to better serve you in your daily work
• Second, in order to continue to dig deeper into the field of event operations

Pay attention to the activities of competitors and peers, pay attention to first-tier Internet companies and some innovative event companies, and collect the activities that are popular in the circle of friends.

If you stick to the above methods, one day, you will find that your creativity for activities is as endless as the torrent of a river, or as unstoppable as the flooding of the Yellow River. I hope you can achieve the state of no code in your heart as soon as possible.

Author: Activity Operation Diary

Source: Product Operations (PM-20200201)

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